Soft Landing, Warm Dinner

Yesterday we made the drive from Corpus Christi back to Tomball; my dad in the passengers seat with his arm propped up on three pillows.

Thanks to all who prayed and to our God who heard our cries. We set down in a lush field of green to the open arms of friends and family. While no major bruises, there remain lingering thoughts of what may have been, and three rather nasty incisions in my dad's left wrist and forearm. The wounds will have to close up on their own, which should take about three weeks. That is, if we can convince him to go to the wound care clinic, and let if be dressed and cleaned by professionals. Driving home he set up his first appointment, but upon learning the price of the service, was determined to do it on his own. With a little persuasion we were able to convince him to go every other day, while changing the gauze himself (well, with moms help) during the intermediary day.

For me, as soon as we pulled up to my parents house, I threw my stuff in my truck along with two bags of range cubes, fed said cubes to the cows, and then trucked it to the store to purchase the ingredients for dinner with the people in my book study (aka. the drinking club).

This was what I needed. While I was not alone in Corpus, I was disconnected from a large part of my community. I have never been one to get homesick, but I missed engaging with friends.

What a reintroduction to my community: the art of dinner! I love to cook so I made four cheese tortellini and sauteed spinach. The meal was delicious, as was the conversation. Then after dinner we retired to the patio to go through the book.

We are going through Eugene Peterson's "Leap Over a Wall" and we ended up talking about change. How we now view change as a disregard for the past and an all-out embrace of the new. Peterson, and we agreed, thinks that we need to recapture an earlier definition of change. Instead of erasing our wrinkles, we should embrace them. Change is good, but change is built upon the foundation of our pasts. It is not mere change, but growth (and because Matt pointed out that I tend to use the word a lot, I will say organic growth). We can and should use the dirt and crap of our pasts to fuel a new growth in Christ (not to say we should be adding dirt and crap, but let Christ redeem that which is already there). If we simply "move on" without looking back or stopping to contemplate, we will be like a tumbleweed; always moving with the wind, and hollow on the inside.

All this to say that it is nice to be back.

josh

In Case of Snake Bite, Pull Cord

There is nothing more scary than receiving two voicemail messages, one from a cousin saying "Josh, call me" in a serious voice, and one from my brother saying "Josh, call me; something happened to dad." I immediatley called Justin to learn that my dad had been bit in the hand by a rattlesnake at our ranch in Freer.

Freefall...

Go home...

Drive to Chorpus Christi...

Pull Cord.

I never realized how big of a support network my father and family has. My mother found out about the incident while having dinner at her pastors house. I had been at a crawfish boil with Anna, who is a co-worker of Ellie's, whose parents were also having dinner at their pastors house. As soon as I got off the phone with my brother I told Anna what had happened and that we needed to go. Ellie and Jeremiah were across the table, so I informed them as well. She called her dad, he was sitting across the table from my mom and told her (of course, her cell phone was at the house, where it belongs).

We all converged at my parents house, then loaded up in the car, with my uncle behind the wheel. The cell phones had already been working behind the scenes, but the first hour on the road we all scrolled through our phonebooks calling everyone we knew. Everyone we knew called everyone they knew. I would not be the least surprised to find out that we had well over a thousand people praying for him and us.

Community is a strange, beautiful thing. I am now starting to see with new eyes why it is so critical for living out a healthy Christianity. We need each other. Sure, we can do a lot on our own, but when we do, it takes away from us, makes us less. With community we can deal with situations in a way that builds, that adds to our lives, making us stronger, not wearing us down.

We still don't know what pasture we will land in; thankfully, with the prayers that have been prayed for us and the grace of a wonderous God, we are hovering over the greener one. One thing that I know, though, is that even if we find ourselves in the other one, we will have a soft landing; not without scrapes and bruises, but soft.

Thank you all for your prayers.

Josh

Good, Not so Good and Bad

I have been thinking of sin lately, mainly because I am steeped in it, but, hey, thats me. Specifically, I have been thinking of the areas in which I am most tempted, and which many are similarly are tempted.

I have always loved the concept of God expressing his being to us through the good, the true, and the beautiful. I delight in art which makes me reflect on the beauty of creation; poetry with fills we with awe at the thought of Gods depth. And, unfortunately, this if usually where my temptations begin.

I believe that the most powerful and potentially destructive sins begin in the true, good, and beautiful. Sin begins as a slight perversion of these. Then, the more removed they become from God and remain as separate concepts the more they begin to fester with corruption.

One example of this can be seen in art. To preface: this is a gross generalization about art, so don't be too pissed at me. I have always appreciated the visual arts, I am very visual by nature and so they have always been able to communicate rather strongly to me. At the beginning, I loved art because it spoke of God's creation, and the inherent beauty therein. But it seems the trend has moved away from expression of the universal, to the expression of the individual. Within this trend, art has become more "dark" (something which I am not entirely opposed to: I hate kitsch). But it has become dark in a way that is not informing, but merely destructive.

On a more personal note, I have always been a lover of photography. And through this love, I came to an appreciation of the female form, for it has long been a popular subject of photography. The body in general is an amazing thing. It's form; such graceful lines and intricate connections. It is a true thing of beauty. However, this healthy appreciation led to pornography. While female form is something that should be appreciated, it can only be truly appreciated in the correct context. For me pornography gets its appeal from its depiction of this beauty, but it becomes destructive because it has perverted the beautiful into a consumable, something that is used for our own ends instead of initiating worship of God.

Spirit & Soul

The other night Aaron spoke on the nature of worship. During the course of sermon he read a passage (? address) from the message that said something along the lines of worship is our spirit/soul interacting with God in honesty. This sparked memories of past thoughts for me. I have often wondered what exactly our spirit is. This honesty of soul may be a good starting point for understanding this concept.

Something that has always struck me in the old testament is the use of names. Names were not just symbolic placeholders for individual identification, but spoke to who the person was, it was more than a name, as we understand the word. I wonder if this could inform the biblical beginnings of our new testament concept of the personal/individual spirit.

For a long time, I always viewed spirit, my spirit, as something "other" than myself. Now I wonder if there may be more to it. I wonder if my spirit is really myself at my core. If it is the culminations of my longings, my thoughts, and my habits. Day to day, I am separated from this spirit by my deviations of my core self, yet it informs everything I do. Given this view of spirit, it will change and develop over time as I change through my experiences and as my world view forms.

For me, this idea leads to another thought, the idea of Christ's redemption as played out in my own life. As I grow into relationship with God, this, if real, will begin to inform my behaviors and over time, change who I am at my core. On the other hand, if I delve into my own devices, my core will crumble.

Just some random thoughts.